On Nov. 5, 1605, the “Gunpowder Plot” failed as Guy Fawkes was seized before he could blow up the English Parliament.
In 1872, suffragist Susan B. Anthony defied the law by attempting to cast a vote for President Ulysses S. Grant.
In 1912, Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected president, defeating Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt, incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and Socialist Eugene V. Debs.
In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term in office as he defeated Republican challenger Wendell L. Willkie.
In 1964, NASA launched Mariner 3, which was supposed to fly by Mars, but the spacecraft failed to reach its destination.
In 1968, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency, defeating Democratic Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and American Independent candidate George C. Wallace.
In 1974, Democrat Ella T. Grasso was elected governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to win a gubernatorial office without succeeding her husband.
In 1992, Malice Green, a Black motorist, died after he was struck in the head 14 times with a flashlight by a Detroit police officer, Larry Nevers, outside what police said was a crack house. (Nevers and his partner, Walter Budzyn, were found guilty of second-degree murder, but the convictions were overturned; they were later convicted of involuntary manslaughter.)
In 1994, former President Ronald Reagan disclosed he had Alzheimer’s disease.
In 2006, Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced by the Iraqi High Tribunal to hang for crimes against humanity.
In 2007, Hollywood writers began a three-month strike, forcing late-night talk shows to immediately start airing reruns.
2009, a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas left 13 people dead; Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He has not yet been executed.
In 2011, former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, accused of molesting eight boys, was arrested and released on $100,000 bail after being arraigned on 40 criminal counts. (Sandusky was later convicted and sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison for the sexual abuse of 10 boys over a 15-year period.)
In 2017, a gunman armed with an assault rifle opened fire in a small South Texas church, killing more than two dozen people; the shooter, Devin Patrick Kelley, was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In 2018, the U.S., under President Donald Trump, re-imposed all sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
In 2021, a crush of fans during a performance by rapper Travis Scott at a Houston music festival left ten people dead as people were squeezed so tightly they couldn’t breathe.
In 2022, Aaron Carter, the singer-rapper who began performing as a child and had hit albums starting in his teen years, was found dead at his home in Southern California at age 34.